[darcs-users] Re: Whitespace in filenames

[Zack Brown]

On Wed, Aug 06, 2003 at 10:22:51AM -0400, David Roundy wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 04, 2003 at 07:41:22AM -0700, Zack Brown wrote:
> > Each file could have its "real" name, which darcs would be aware of in
> > the same way it is now. But the filename created on disk would be derived
> > by applying rules to the real name. These rules would be based on the
> > filesystem involved. Adding support for a new filesystem would simply
> > involve adding another rule-set to convert real filenames into
> > filesystem-specific filenames (and back again for 'record' and
> > 'push'). Users would specify their filesystem as a command-line argument
> > where necessary.
> 
> I've thought about doing something like that, but I don't think doing it on
> the fly would be a good idea at all.  It might be reasonable, if darcs gets
> ported to a platform which doesn't support some very commonly used
> character, but in general I think it's over-engineering, creating a complex
> solution to a non-problem, which would be a bad thing.

That's cool. So what's the final word on all this? Is it that darcs will
allow any character in filenames, and leave any restrictions up to the user?

(personally I only care if it supports ext2/ext3/etc filenames, my
previous suggestions were intended as an alternative to actual filename
restrictions)

Be well,
Zack

>  The real solution
> (as Peter mentioned) is using reasonable filenames and thinking ahead.
> 
> It's nice to try to keep people from accidentally making mistakes (like
> creating two filenames differing only in case), but it isn't that hard to
> use reasonable filenames, and any scheme involving escaping the filenames
> (for example, replacing '\\' with some other character on windows machines)
> is likely to confuse things.  Certainly determining on write how to escape
> the filenames would be bad, since the filename escape function would need
> to be a 1:1 mapping.
> -- 
> David Roundy
> http://www.abridgegame.org
> 
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-- 
Zack Brown